The present invention relates to an integrated-circuit (IC) card system for providing various services to users of IC cards such as a credit card, a cash card, and/or a passenger ticket.
In a known IC card system of prior art, when an IC card of a user is installed in an IC card terminal device, an operator or the user operates the terminal device. According to the contents of the operation, the IC card terminal device provides various services to the user. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,119,945 describes a prior-art technique of this kind.
In the IC card services of the prior art, the user or the operator must directly operate the IC card terminal, for example, to update a valid period or an expiration time of the IC card or to accumulate a value to a balance the IC card. This leads to a problem of usability such that a long line of users appears at a commutation ticket issuing/updating window for students and workers immediately before the beginning of a new term or the like, and a problem that the user must confirm the balance of his or her prepaid card to add a desired value to the balance. With increase of various services, there arises a problem that the user must conduct complex operation from the IC card terminal. It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide an IC card system having high usability in which highly developed services are available.
When a user accesses a service providing system employing a recording medium such as an IC card, the user registers, to the service providing system, actions or processing necessary for the recording medium including an IC card. The service providing system distributes the actions to service providing terminal devices such as IC card terminals. Thereafter, when the user installs, in a service providing terminal, the recording medium for which the actions have been registered in advance as above, the service providing terminal conducts the actions registered for the recording medium.